Who represents Kurds?

There is nothing that has been offered to Kurds. Debates are confined to the MHP leader's description of 15 journalists attending the said workshop, including myself, as "bad men." These debates are revolving around the following question: who represents Kurds? The answer to this question is less important than the debates focusing on this question.

Can Kurds be Marxist?

I first heard the following story from two journalists who were famous figures from the 1968 generation and who ended up being two of another group of 12 “bad men.” It was in 1969 that a major incident created upheaval in Turkey: the funeral of İmran Öktem. The head of the Supreme Court of Appeals died and since he had once said, "It is human beings who created God," skirmishes erupted during his funeral. The followers of two opposing ideological groups started to quarrel. These two journalists were the leading representatives of the left-wing group during this fight. Years later, a person said to these two journalists: "You are responsible for my being a leftist. When I saw you fight during that quarrel, I too ended up in the fight." This was his first leftist act. This person was Abdullah Öcalan and he told his story to these journalists in Syria when he was still the active leader of the PKK.

I also remember the face of Öcalan among the older students who returned to the faculty after the pardon of 1974. He was a member of one of the Marxist-Leninist ideological groups he had formed in 1968. Perhaps, he is the only representative of this group alive today. During the last meeting with his lawyers, he told them how he held in high esteem the memory of Mahir Çayan, a famous 1968 figure who followed in the footsteps of Che Guevara.

The PKK was established as a Marxist-Leninist organization. More importantly, it flourished using Stalinist methods. Even though Öcalan today has discovered certain faults with Marx, this organization is still positioned within the Marxist tradition. Even Öcalan's suggestions about a Kurdish Kemalism are not different from the Kemalist analyses of Marxists from the 1968 generation. It sounds correct to me to define the ideology of the PKK as Kurdish Marxism (and even Leninism and Stalinism).

Then, there remains the following question to be answered: Will Kurds be Marxist? I am sure of the following answer: The ideology of the PKK represents Kurds to the extent that the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C) can be considered as a Turkish organization. As you may notice, I said "ideology." No once can deny the fact that the PKK is capable of representing Kurds historically and actually. Yes, but does this representativeness, which is the result of the circumstances and conditions, still apply ideologically? If the conditions are normalized and if violence is no longer the basic decisive factor, will the PKK still be able to claim to represent Kurds -- which I estimate currently correspond to one third of Kurds? When the Kurdish politics gets plurality in a free atmosphere and when the weapons in our minds -- both in the minds of the state and the PKK -- are eliminated, what will be the PKK's representativeness?

Anti-Kurdism

I cannot find a better word that would express anti-Kurdish sentiments in ethnic terms. Currently, there is a certain anti-Kurdism in Turkey similar to xenophobia or hatred towards the other. As we get closer to the settlement of the Kurdish issue, it is apparent that anti-Kurdish sentiments will become stronger.

We need to review what we have gone through after the establishment of the Republic and arrive at a fair conclusion. When the Mosul issue could not be settled, the Turkish state decided to assimilate Kurds instead of granting autonomy to Kurds. To this end, it employed all the instruments of the central nation-state, including education. To be frank, it was successful to a certain extent. According to a study, today 70 percent of children aged below 15 in Diyarbakır do not know the Kurdish language. However, the problem that we must solve today implies that this assimilation policy has failed. The Kurdish issue, caused by despotic assimilation policies, can be solved only by showing respect to the Kurdish ethnic identity and this can be done only by raising democratic standards as the interior minister has announced. The Kurdish issue is a Kurdish language problem. The status that will be given to the Kurdish language as a mother tongue forms virtually the single material basis of the settlement. The rest is about repairing what has been broken, restoring an atmosphere of mutual trust and rehabilitating the damaged mindsets. Political targets such as establishing a federation or an independent Kurdish state are nothing but the romantic fancies of the Kurdish intelligentsia. Turkey has strong dynamics for integration and the great majority of these dynamics are unique. This mood and the collective conscience which holds Turkey together are the result of these unique dynamics. Despite ever increasing anti-Kurdism, it is not likely that Kurds will abandon western Turkey, particularly İstanbul.

In a sense, the content of anti-Kurdism is still governed by these integrative dynamics of Turkey. More than half of Kurds live to the west of the Euphrates. The economic problems and distorted urbanizations of the cities in the west which are receiving the inflow of Kurdish migration has caused the two communities to confront each other. The whole matter is about winning one's bread and the ensuing competition among the poor people from both communities. Everything can be exploited in this competition for basic needs, particularly ethnicities.

If these basic physical needs and the resultant tension acquire a political character, then a Turkish issue will emerge. If out of two unemployed young people aspiring for the same position, one is Turkish and the other is Kurdish, then the issue will automatically turn into an ethnic issue. A quarrel between owners of two neighboring shops will end with an ethnically oriented call for help if the ethnic identities of the shop owners are different.

With its harsh opposition, the MHP is actually trying to create a front of resistance against Kurdish political demands. It is seeking measures against the Kurdish demands that may target the unitary nation-state since nationalism is its raison d'être. This role, currently assumed by the MHP, has been being wielded by the state through its official assimilation policy until now. During this time, the nationalist vein represented by the MHP has been watching developments from a distance. Now, the state, namely the military, has finally given in to a satisfactory solution and only the MHP has remained as the sole defender of the nation-state.

The real problem will emerge if the MHP risks mobilizing the ethnic tensions in western Turkey, which are the result of conflicts over the provision of basic human needs. These social tendencies are very likely to be politicized and when they are politicized, then there is a great potential for conflict and clashes.

Since the beginning, the MHP has flourished in central Anatolia, which represents the mainstream Turkish sentiments in Turkey. Thus, the MHP has grown as a party mainly of central Anatolia. Since the last election, the MHP's geographical orientation has started changing and shifting toward western Turkey. The cities where the MHP has boosted its electoral support are characterized mainly by the increased flow of Kurdish migration and the resulting Kurdish ghettos. Anti-Kurdism naturally adds to the strength of the MHP. However, the leader with the greatest common sense and care with respect to any Kurdish-Turkish conflict has been MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli. He has repeatedly cautioned the party members against sparking Kurdish-Turkish animosity. The MHP leader's constructive and positive role in preventing a visible ethnic conflict cannot be denied.

Bahçeli can be seen as a politician who is most distant to Öcalan, but it is no doubt that Öcalan's motto, "Turks cannot exist without Kurds and vice versa," will automatically accepted and uttered by Bahçeli. Turkey's last 25 years have been characterized by ethnic terror that claimed lives of 40,000 people. The lives of these people have not managed to trigger animosity between Kurds and Turks. It follows that it is very unlikely to see such animosity to arise when we are so close to the settlement. This is what common sense signifies.